Category: Indian Technology

Tata Communications has launched two different services in the cloud space to deliver self-service and pay-as-you-use IT application plus data centre infrastructure services which are easily accessible via the internet. The first one is an on-demand computing and storage service called InstaCompute and the second being an online collaboration and web-based office tool software called InstaOffice. Both these services are primarily meant for Indian businesses.

InstaCompute runs on compute and storage infrastructure from Dell and aims at providing a secure and elastic on-demand computing and storage resources to businesses over the network on a “go-as-you-need” basis. Computing and storage is based in India and can be paid for in Rupees or global currencies.

InstaOffice is powered by Google Apps and includes email, calendar, instant messaging, voice and video chat, as well as office document applications. InstaOffice joins the club of other InstaApps that Tata Communications already offers in India – InstaCC for contact centres, InstaCRM – a customer relationship management software and InstaECM for content storage and management.

After making a wave in the computer peripheral market with their inexpensive but good products, Intex Technologies has now launched its LCD and CRT television range. Intex has already launched their mobile phones and other consumer electronics goods prior to this.

The initial plans are of four LCD television products that are priced in the range of Rs 15,500 to Rs 43,000 and six CRT televisions in the range of Rs 3,900 to Rs 7,200. These prices are very competitive compared to other famous brands in the market. Intex has already launched their LCD and CRT televisions range in southern and northern region of India.

According to Vinayak Kumar Lal, general manager (marketing), Intex Technologies “Intex was undergoing a brand transition from an IT hardware company to a consumer electronics firm. Though we have been product-driven rather than marketing driven so far, we will shortly start a campaign in print and electronic media for our new products.”

Just like the fabulous CWG opening ceremony in Delhi, the closing ceremony promises to be extravagant too. CWG 2010 closing ceremony will be graced by several prominent Bollywood stars, who will add their charm to the event.

The CWG Closing ceremony will be held at Jawaharlal Nehru stadium where there will be multiple segments with spectacular song and dance celebrations and a colorful laser show with India’s martial arts as the main part of the show. The main theme of the event is Universal Love’. Around 2,500 school students will go to perform with 7,000 artists from across India.

Bollywood singers Sunidhi Chauhan, Shankar Mahadevan and Kailash Kher will be part of the ceremony. Tickets for the CWG 2010 Delhi closing ceremony is priced at Rs. 50,000, Rs. 20,000, Rs. 4,000, and Rs. 750.

After the Google revolution, we have seen many desi search engines coming up from time to time. Well here is a search engine with a difference. Titled as JantaKhoj, this search website is a people search engine for India which manually collects data from different publiclyavailable sources. This data is then compiled and put together on the web to make it easily search-able.

The main sources of data are records of various govt. departments (which the company chooses not to disclose). The website has data of over 50 million Indians on their records which include address, phone number and information about relatives and neighbors.

The company mainly provides background verification services such as matrimonial verification, domestic help verification driver verification, tenant verification and employee background verification services. The services are charged between Rs.1475 and Rs.2225 per verification service.

You can visit the website and search for your name too. In case you want your data to be removed from the website, you can see this page.

The International and Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) has released the reports of a study which was conducted recently by them. The study has some very interesting facts about the behavior of Internet users in India. Here is a summary of the findings from the report.

Indian internet users use the internet for 3.5 hours a week on an average. This means every Indian uses the Internet for an average of 26 minutes a day.

Indian women spend lesser time ~25 minutes, online as compared to men during weekdays and the time spent online on weekends is lower for both men ~22 minutes and women ~23 minutes.

Activity of Indians on social networking sites increases gradually through the week and reaches the peak on Fridays. This overall increase from monday to friday was found to be over 12 per cent.

Bank websites are accessed more during the weekdays. However users tend to spend a longer time on the Bank websites during weekends.

Earlier this week, Sony quietly launched the PlayStation Move controller in India. The Move is Sony’s attempt at catching up with the casual gaming revolution initiated by the Nintendo Wii. It is a motion sensing game controller that was demoed at the E3 2010.

The Move consists of two controllers – the main motion controller has a light bulb at its end, while the navigation controller has a joystick and a d-pad. A camera unit, known as PlayStation Eye, is used for accurately tracking the position of the Move controller. To learn more about the Move, check out our earlier extensive preview of the controller.

According to PCWorld, the Move motion controller is priced at Rs. 2,499, while the navigation controller is available for Rs. 1,899. The starter pack which bundles PlayStation Move motion controller, PlayStation Eye camera and a Starter disc including demos of the titles Sports Champions, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11, Start the Party!, costs Rs. 3,650.

Ubuntu was working on the Ubuntu Font licensing, and now that it has been approved, they have already uploaded it to the archive. However, the good news is that it gained the Indian Rupee Symbol recently and will now be available by default in the upcoming Ubuntu 10.10.

So if you have been waiting for Ubuntu 10.10, here is another reason to shift to it.

Almost a month ago Google released the Instant search feature on its homepage. Google Instant allows you to search for thingswithout having to refresh the page and also allows users to autocomplete the queries using a tab button. This will allow you to search without having to use the search button.

Initially Google Instant was not available in many countries including India. But Google has now finally started rolling out Google Instant in India (via Google.co.in) and the roll-out is expected to complete all over India by the end of this week.

According to Ben Gomes – a distinguished engineer at Google clarified that in India and many other countries where broadband or fast internet connectivity has less penetration compared to US, Google will examine the speed of the connection and turn off the Instant feature automatically when needed. It will again be turned on automatically when the speed increases again. You can also read more about our Google Instant Search coverage.

I am sure you must have already visited the official website of the Commonwealth Games 2010 that is being held at Delhi. And in case you have not visited it till now, trying opening it in your browser and you will add to the huge pageview count the website is clocking as of now. Yes, the official website of the 19th Commonwealth Games, cwgdelhi2010.org now gets 7 – 8 million page views every day. Additionally, the results page also gets half a million pageviews daily.

According to the Organising committee of the CWG 2010, the website had only clocked 50,000-odd visitors till the 1st october 2010 but after that the traffic has been tripling every day. The Games started on 3rd October with huge pomp and show and will go on till the 14th October during which the traffic is expected to clock even higher numbers! For the ones who do not know this, the official website of CWG 2010 is powered by Drupal – a famous open-source content management system.

Looks like everyone is now trying to monetise the 14 day long Commonwealth Games (CWG) that is being held in India someway or the other. Yesterday we told you about a Delhi and CWG specific map service that has been launched by MapMyIndia. Now, Indiatimes has joined the motion too! Times Internet has partnered with CWG 2010 to bring a live stream of the games to the masses at Live.Indiatimes.com/CWGLive.cms (a microsite on Indiatimes.com). Live streaming of these games started yesterday (Oct 5th).

According to a spokesperson from Times Internet the main motive behind this Live Streaming is to enable as many people as possible to be a part of the games. Indiatimes has also integrated Facebook and Twitter into the Live Streaming microsite so that viewers post comments directly on the live streaming page.